San José, 19 May 2026 (IICA) – The Director General of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), Muhammad Ibrahim, held a virtual meeting with the Executive Secretary (Vice Minister) of Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, Cleber Soares, during which they discussed the upcoming launch of a “Regional Hub for Innovation and Sustainable Agriculture” in Georgetown, Guyana. The Hub is envisioned as a center of excellence for innovation, technology transfer, and agricultural training aimed at making concrete contributions to increasing the productivity and resilience of regional agrifood systems.
The Hub, being developed by the host country together with Brazil, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) and IICA, is expected to become a milestone in the framework of technical cooperation among Brazil, IICA, the Caribbean, and Central America, with emphasis on scaling up technologies to improve the productivity of agrifood systems in two regions that continue to face gaps in this area.
The Government of Brazil, Embrapa and IICA — the driving forces behind the Hub, a key project in the first phase of the new administration at the helm of IICA led by Ibrahim, a renowned Guyanese agronomist — will be responsible for technology and knowledge transfer in this South American country, with emphasis on resilient production systems and innovation geared toward family farming.
Soares and Ibrahim also discussed the current context of disruptions in the international fertilizer trade — which severely affects a region like Latin America that, while being the world’s largest net food exporter, depends on imports of chemical products to enrich soils. They also addressed the threats posed to the agricultural sector by the El Niño phenomenon, and the agenda for the upcoming meeting of the IICA Executive Committee, one of the Institute’s governing bodies, to be held in July and which will bring together representatives from Antigua and Barbuda, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Saint Lucia. .
Mais informação:
Gerência de Comunicação Institucional do IICA.
comunicacion.institucional@iica.int
